AFRICA (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only James M. Davidson.

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, earnest attempts were made within African American archaeology to link material objects recovered from North American contexts to African parent cultures. One common symbol recovered archaeologically on a variety of objects was the X or cross motif, sometimes placed within a circle. Originally...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Shelton.

The Middle Stone Age lithic assemblage at the Pinnacle Point site (Western Cape, South Africa) fluctuates between local, coarse-grained material and exotic, fine-grained, heat treated material throughout the human occupation layers. By understanding raw material choice, the first step in the chaîne opératoire, we can better understand these shifts in raw material representation. Quantifying the mechanical characteristics associated with knapability and comparing these ranked benefits to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Egeland. Alexa Uberseder. Cynthia Fadem.

Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, remains one of the richest sources of information on human bio-behavioral evolution between 1-2 million years ago. While much research has justifiably focused on the gorge’s junction area and its rich collection of sites, including FLK 22 (The Zinjanthropus Floor), the older fossiliferous deposits to the west have received much less attention in recent years. The DK area, which lies along the north edge of the main gorge, is particularly intriguing and was made famous by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Duff. Ashenafi Zena. Addisalem Melesse. John Wolff.

This presentation discusses a new research effort to identify, document, date and better understand the numerous megalithic stele sites of the Gedeo Zone in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Regional State (SNNPRS) of southern Ethiopia. The Gedeo Zone is home to numerous stele, features that occur as isolates, in small groups, and as localities with numerous stele. Stele range from 1 meter to over 5 meters in length, and though some remain standing, most have collapsed. Stele are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanuel Beyin.

The Red Sea basin is emerging as an important region for testing current hypotheses concerning early human dispersal routes out of Africa. However, the immediate peripheries of the basin, especially the African side had seen little prior Paleolithic research, hindering well informed assessment of the temporal and cultural contexts of hominin adaptation along the Red Sea. Owing to its strategic geographic position along the African side of the Red Sea, Eritrea (with ~1300 km of coastline)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cameron Gokee. Matthew Kroot.

The 16-19th centuries in West Africa marked a period of dramatic social and cultural change fueled, in part, by the opening of Atlantic markets and the rise of predatory states. The responses of societies peripheral to these political economic processes often involved strategic shifts in the production of space—including relocation to highland refuge areas, aggregation into larger villages, increases in residential mobility, and fortification of elite houses and/or entire settlements. In this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lydia Wilson Marshall. Thomas Biginagwa.

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Slave and ivory trader Rashid bin Masud created the caravan trading post Kikole in southwestern Tanzania in the 1890s. Like Dutch colonists in South Africa, Masud appears to have sought to tame this foreign landscape and to cultivate a resemblance to his home region (in his case, the Swahili Coast). For example, he planted coastal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Dueppen. Daphne Gallagher.

Ancient villages in western Burkina Faso were long-lived communities, temporally rooted in deep social histories experienced in the built environment and local geography. The site of Kirikongo, continuously inhabited from ca. 100 CE to 1700 CE, and composed of 13 separate tells (mounds), exemplifies these spatio-temporal dynamics, as over time the economic and social characters of tells, and their spatial positioning and characteristics changed dramatically despite maintenance of certain spatial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stefano Biagetti. Stefania Merlo. Elhadi Adam. Francesc C. Conesa. Enrico Crema.

At the end of the African Humid Period (c. 5000 years ago), the Sahara become dry. Yet, in spite of the onset of current arid conditions, human societies found successful strategies to cope with reduced rainfall and patchy natural resources. Archaeological evidence from the arid Sahara, dated from the last five millennia, can be studied by means of Earth Observation techniques. In this paper, we will present the results of our research from central Sahara, aimed at the remote reconstruction of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aribidesi Usman.

This paper will report the recent excavation at Okete-Kakini site near the king’s (Attah) palace in Idah. Okete-Kakini was the residential area of Attah’s eunuchs (amonoji), one of the two major palace officials who carried out various functions for the Attah. The aim of the investigation is to identify the activities of the palatine elites through an examination of their material culture found in archaeological excavations. It is thought that the members of the palatine groups, like the formal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Willeke Wendrich. Rachel Moy. Hans Barnard.

The combination of gold and archaeology is never a good one. The site of Mai Adrasha is under imminent threat of total destruction because of large scale panning of natural gold traces by the local population living near to the largest Axumite site West of Axum. In December 2015 a team from UCLA started a community project to work with the local population in safeguarding and excavating this important site. The research focus of the work is to establish the lay-out, development and function of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only C. Conquery-Vidrovitch.

This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stefano Biagetti.

In the Tadrart Acacus (SW Libya), ethnoarchaeological research carried out between 2003-2011 has shown that its current inhabitants, the Kel Tadrart Tuareg, are a successful example of adaptation to extreme climatic and environmental conditions. Their exceptional resilience, characterized by high degree of variability and opportunism, escapes some of the traditional assumptions often done in ethnography and archaeology regarding the classification and identification of societies, such as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristina Douglass.

This paper discusses resource exploitation patterns at coastal archaeological sites located in the Velondriake Marine Protected Area in southwest Madagascar. In particular, it assesses the selective reliance of coastal communities on a variety of local habitats and taxa. The data are derived from regional survey and the excavation of five archaeological sites, including small rock shelters and open-air sites, ranging in date from ca. AD 800 to 1900. The data describe multiple narratives of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bethany Simpson. Emily Cole.

This paper presents the results of the 2016 field season at the Graeco-Roman Village of Qarah el-Hamra. Located along the north shore of Lake Qaroun, the site was discovered in 2003 by the UCLA Fayum Project, and a magnetic survey in 2004 revealed the presence of an extensive settlement. Excavation that same year confirmed the existence of Greco-Roman remains, however the site remained otherwise unexplored until the start of this new field project in 2016. The new Qarah el-Hamra Excavation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Pargeter. Adela Cebeiro. Saul Shukman.

This is an abstract from the "Expedient Technological Behavior: Global Perspectives and Future Directions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bipolar reduction is a central strategy in Pleistocene archaeology, recognized as an archetypal “expedient” technology. It entails hammer and anvil flake production, suitable for stabilizing smaller cores during miniaturized flake production. Despite its widespread occurrence and decades of study, debates...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Ames. Benjamin Collins.

Grassridge rockshelter is located at the base of the Stormberg Mountains approximately 200 km inland in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. Previous excavation by Dr. Hermanus Opperman in 1979 focused primarily on the Later Stone Age (LSA) and Holocene occupations at Grassridge, but he also identified an underlying Middle Stone Age (MSA, ~300-30 ka) sequence containing abundant typologically MSA lithic material, well-preserved faunal remains, and charcoal. With particular interest in the MSA...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Curtis.

Sustained archaeological research on the Asmara Plateau of Eritrea occurred between 1998 and 2003, producing important initial efforts in ceramic and lithic artifact typologies, subsistence reconstruction, and regional perspectives in landscape use and settlement patterns dating to the first millennium BCE. Researchers identified a distinct regional cultural expression termed the Ancient Ona Culture. This paper reviews the key qualities of the Ancient Ona Culture and argues that, while...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Taylor.

Despite almost 100 years of scientific research, the archaeological record of Central Africa remains stubbornly peripheral to ongoing debates centering on the origins of rainforest hunting and gathering. Currently available chronological, palaeobiogeographical and technological data converges to indicate that the initial settlement of the central African rainforest belt may have been first undertaken c.300 ka BP by archaic Homo sapiens. The appearance of new tools suitable for hafting as stone...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karl W. Butzer.

This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sam Challis.

Statements of authorship of rock art necessarily involve statements of identity. What happens, then, when identity is assumed or implied? This paper examines a well-known historical rock art panel in South Africa, supposed to portray a narrative of the demise of the San from their own perspective. To the contrary it finds that in fact the 'colonists' sporting wide-brimmed hats and toting guns are, more likely, members of an emergent identity of creolized raiding bands drawn from markedly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Coutu. Judith Sealy.

During the African Iron Age from 800 to 1200 AD, overseas trade began to expand out of southern Africa across the Indian Ocean, which caused an increase in the export of raw materials such as ivory. Archaeological evidence of ivory working has been found on sites across southern Africa dating to this period, including KwaGandaGanda and K2 in South Africa, Kaitshaa and Bosutswe in Botswana and Ingombe Ilede in Zambia. It is unknown whether the raw ivory was obtained locally or traded in, whether...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Hernández. Carolina Mallol. Matilde Arnay. Margarita Jambrina-Enríquez. Antonio V. Herrera-Herrera.

This is an abstract from the "Charred Organic Matter in the Archaeological Sedimentary Record" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Roques the García rockshelter is an aboriginal site located in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain. Its archaeosedimentary sequence is characterised by a high presence of combustion structures. In this study we present the preliminary results from a micromorphological and biomarker analysis of one of the structures.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gerald M. Berg.

This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcle D'Hertefelt.

This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.